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sweet mead methods

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For all of the bad press the "start high, finish sweet" approach gets, I've actually found it to be pretty reliable.

In general, my recipe for a sweet mead is to start right around 1.130 and use either D47 or 71B (though I suspect other 14% tolerance yeasts would work). With good nutrient and pH management this will almost always finish between 1.015 and 1.020.

This year I am doing a yeast trial with my traditional. Next up (or nearly next up) on my experiment list is to start two identical meads at 1.110 and 1.125 with D47. I will let them both finish and clear, then backsweeten the dry one to whatever FG the other one ends up at (I would predict about 1.013). Age and compare. From what I read the backsweetened one will be better, but so far I haven't seen results from such a side-by-side comparison.
 
anir dendroica said:
Next up (or nearly next up) on my experiment list is to start two identical meads at 1.110 and 1.125 with D47. I will let them both finish and clear, then backsweeten the dry one to whatever FG the other one ends up at (I would predict about 1.013). Age and compare. From what I read the backsweetened one will be better, but so far I haven't seen results from such a side-by-side comparison.
Click to expand...

I'll be very interested in seeing the results of this experiment. I'm sure they will be different meads. The load-everything-up-front-and-let-the-yeast-go approach will deplete some of the sugars (the easy to eat ones) and leave others behind (the unfermentable ones). Backsweetening adds all of the sugars and leaves them unfermented, meaning you end up with some of the sugars in the mead that would typically have been consumed under the first approach, and a different balance overall.
 
kuri said:
I'll be very interested in seeing the results of this experiment. I'm sure they will be different meads. The load-everything-up-front-and-let-the-yeast-go approach will deplete some of the sugars (the easy to eat ones) and leave others behind (the unfermentable ones). Backsweetening adds all of the sugars and leaves them unfermented, meaning you end up with some of the sugars in the mead that would typically have been consumed under the first approach, and a different balance overall.
Click to expand...

I would too. Either way, I will just have to do some experimenting of my own to see what works best for me. For the first three batches I have going, I went the finish dry/backsweeten route. Thanks again for all of your help...
 
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